As glaciers retreat globally under climate warming, ice-marginal lakes are expanding rapidly in both number and area, and an increasing number of glaciers and ice sheet margins now terminate in freshwater. The presence of a lake alters glacier boundary conditions by enabling calving and subaqueous melt, which can destabilize glacier termini, modify ice motion, and decouple glacier retreat from direct climatic forcing. However, the physical processes governing lake-terminating systems and their representation in numerical models remain poorly constrained compared with marine-terminating systems.
This session aims to advance our understanding of the interactions between glaciers and ice-marginal lakes across diverse spatial and temporal scales. We invite contributions addressing, but not limited to: (1) the dynamics of lake-terminating glaciers, including calving, frontal ablation, subaqueous melt, flotation, and terminus stability, (2) the dynamic response of glaciers to lake-level changes and drainage events, including the filling and draining of ice-marginal lakes and their effects on basal conditions, ice velocity, and terminus position, and (3) the transition from land- to lake-terminating conditions (or vice versa) and its effects on glacier dynamics.
We invite contributions based on field observations, remote sensing, numerical modelling, laboratory experiments, and theoretical framework, covering mountain glaciers, ice caps, and ice sheet margins across all glaciated regions. Studies comparing lake-terminating and marine-terminating systems, and palaeo perspectives on ice-lake interaction are also encouraged.